Tag: Capitol Insurrection

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Capitol Insurrection Congress GOP January 6

Secrecy Around Today’s Jan. 6 Hearing Due To ‘Massive Security Threats’ Related To Marjorie Greene: Report

If you were wondering why the January 6 House Select Committee has been so very hush-hush about its last-minute hearing later this afternoon, we now know that it has something to do with “massive security threats” related to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), according to Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post.

Alemany was a guest on MSNBC this morning and revealed what she had learned from sources on Capitol Hill regarding Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who will testify today and why there’s so much cloak and dagger from the Jan. 6 panel:

“We have heard actually that some of the, as you just read, that the reason why her testimony has been so closely guarded is because of massive security threats in the last hearing. She did say, reveal, that [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene, she heard Marjorie Taylor Greene asked for a pardon, and you can only imagine what that does in terms of elevating her name and potentially causing far-right extremists to levy some of these credible threats that have come her way.”

Greene wasn’t the only Republican who was seeking a pardon in the final days of the Trump administration. The others we know about thanks to Hutchinson are Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), and Scott Perry (R-PA).

Alemany also compared Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony to a well-known figure from the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon:

“We have had people previously tell us that if there is anyone going to be the John Dean of this investigation, Cassidy Hutchinson is the person who is the most likely to be that person in terms of her access to the top figures in Trump’s orbit and her proximity to the former president and what she was able to overhear, the people in and out of the Oval Office on Jan. 6. But it is important to note we’re not sure there’s another witness corroborating her testimony today. There was clearly a sensitivity and urgency to her testifying today, and you’ve got to think that it’s in part due to the security concerns, but also because they’re worried she might potentially back out. This is not a small thing for this individual to come forward, put her career on the line.”

The Post reporter concluded by noting:

“Obviously she’s being compelled, there are subpoenas at play. Several individuals like Bill Stepien who didn’t appear were subpoenaed to appear, but this is a big thing for her. She’s in her 20s, she’s a young person with, you know, little institutional support in terms of the other people she used to work with cooperating with this investigation.”

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Capitol Insurrection Donald Trump January 6

Trump Has ALL CAPS Online Meltdown As Jan. 6 Hearings Reconvene: ‘I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!’

With the January 6 House Select Committee starting back with its public hearings today, failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump took to his pathetic Twitter substitute, Truth Social, and began railing against the committee, insisting that he wanted equal time.

Here’s what Trump posted shortly before the committee was gaveled into session:

“The Fake News Networks are perpetuating lies, falsehoods, and Russia, Russia, Russia type disinformation (same sick people, here we go again!) by allowing the low rated but nevertheless one sided and slanderous Unselect Committee hearings to go endlessly and aimlessly on (and on and on!),” he wrote. “It is a one sided, highly partisan Witch Hunt, the likes of which has never been seen in Congress before. Therefore, I am hereby demanding EQUAL TIME to spell out the massive Voter Fraud & Dem Security Breach!”

“I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!”

Of course, if Trump really wanted his side of the story to be heard, all he’d have to do is notify committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and let him know he wants to testify under oath in public and televised.

Of course, Trump won’t agree to show up and testify because he knows he’d commit perjury within a minute and a half of opening his mouth, leaving him open to being charged with that crime.

Also, as demented and scatterbrained as Trump is, can you imagine what a good attorney such as committee member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) would do to him? He’d destroy the Donald and leave nothing but orange fragments in place of where the disgraced ex-president had been sitting.

So, Donald, here’s a challenge: Have your “people” notify the committee that you want your equal time and you’ll probably get incredible ratings, which we all know are paramount to you because you’re a narcissistic asshole who thinks the world revolves around him.

What do you say, coward?

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Capitol Insurrection Donald Trump Elections January 6

Trump’s January 6 Coup Only Failed Because He Was Unable To Get To The Capitol: Report

Despite having been a failure at almost everything he’s attempted during his life, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump came incredibly close to pulling off something that had never been attempted in the history of the United States: A coup that would have allowed him to remain in office even though he had lost the 2020 election.

So what went wrong? As it turns out, a last-minute limo ride to the U.S. Capitol was all that stood in the way of Trump being installed as dictator for life.

Thanks to the superb investigative work of the January 6 House Select Committee, we learned this week that the Secret Service was unable to get adequate police protection for Trump to travel to the Capitol and complete his illegal takeover.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and the author of Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present explained Saturday on CNN just how close the United States came to being an absolute dictatorship, with host Jim Acosta asking her:

“(Liz) Cheney also said Trump had a sophisticated seven-point plan to overturn the election and the chair of the committee, Bennie Thompson, called this a coup attempt. Ruth, you’re an expert on coups. What’s the significance of that?”

Ben-Ghiat responded:

“I was really pleased to see Chairman Thompson use that word because it’s the right word for something that’s the result of a process that started — in a sense it started before November 2020… because Trump had been trying to discredit elections for several years and forming his personality cult so the faithful would rally when he summoned them.”

She then added:

“But coups can take months or years to plan and this was a multi-pronged attempt to overthrow our democracy. It’s worth reviewing that he tried so many things simultaneously. He had General Michael Flynn trying to have martial law or military intervention and he tried the trickery that happened with the Georgia Secretary of State. And when none of that worked, he went nuclear and did what autocrats have done in the past and used violence, summoned the people there to right this monstrous wrong on his behalf.”

But it was what the author said next that stunned Acosta:

“It’s interesting, what came out recently, is Trump was trying to get to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He couldn’t get there. This is consistent, if you’re having a coup and summoned everybody and you expect to be anointed as the head of a new illegitimate government, you have to be there. There’s a phase in coups. They’re violent, quick, and then you have the pronouncement of the new order. That’s why he was trying to get there.”

Acosta could only respond:

“Wow! That’s a great point.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqwJKh_fjoo&feature=emb_logo

If Trump had made it to the Capitol, we would now be living in a totalitarian state. We just barely avoided what the Founding Fathers most feared.

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Fox News January 6 Media in America

The Ratings Are In: 20 Million Watched The Jan. 6 Hearing – Only 3 Million Watched Fox

Based on the numbers from the first televised hearing of the January 6 House Select Committee, it appears that Fox News dropped the ball in a big way and got destroyed in the ratings.

According to the New York Times, at least 20 million viewers tuned in to watch the hearings. Only 3 million opted for Fox, which deliberately avoided televising the historic event:

An audience of at least 20 million people watched the first prime-time hearing of the House Select Committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on Thursday night, according to Nielsen.

ABC attracted the biggest audience, with 5.2 million viewers. NBC and CBS each had an audience of more than three million. MSNBC averaged more than four million, and CNN drew 2.7 million. (The 20 million figure did not yet include PBS, so the total audience was most likely a bit bigger.)

MSNBC did especially well compared to Fox:

MSNBC averaged a whopping (for them) 4.161 million total viewers, trouncing both Fox News (2.957 million total viewers) by 29 percent and CNN (2.617 total million viewers) by 37 percent. CNN finished way ahead of its direct cable news competition in the key demographic for news programming, adults 25-54, with 709,000 viewers from that age range vs. 555,000 on MSNBC and 513,000 on Fox. That’s a 22 percent advantage over MSNBC and 28 percent win over Fox News.

The three Fox hosts who provided anti-coverage and criticism of the hearings — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — saw their numbers crater, which is bad news for the conservative network with more public hearings on the way in the weeks ahead.

Once again, Fox would rather lose tens of millions of viewers than air the truth. It’s one of many reasons they should remove the word “news” from their propaganda network.

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Congress Fox News January 6

Tucker Carlson Pitched An On-Air Hissy Fit During Thursday’s Jan. 6 Committee Hearing

Fox News host Tucker Carlson proved once again Thursday evening that he and the network he works for have zero credibility and are nothing more than a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party and its would-be dictator for life, Donald Trump.

As the first evening of hearings from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol were beginning at 8:00 p.m., Carlson was starting his nightly show, and he made it clear from the get-go that he had no intention of letting any truth into his broadcast:

“This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live.

“They are lying, and we will not let them do it.”

HuffPost notes it wasn’t just Carlson’s ranting that was completely fact-free and at times hysterical:

He and his producers plastered hysterical chyrons across the screen for their millions of viewers to see: “JAN 6 CMTE FUELS FALSE NARRATIVES AS SHAM INVESTIGATION DRAGS ON.” “LEADERS WILL SPEND 90 MINUTES GIVING MORAL LECTURE.” “OUR LEADERS ARE FOCUSING ON JAN. 6 WHILE IGNORING THE REAL THREATS.”

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, Carlson also suggested that investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection might just led to another insurrection, which is ironic since he insisted there had been no insurrection in the first place:

“This was not an insurrection, but you know what will give you an insurrection? If you ignore legitimate concerns of a population. If you brush them aside like they don’t matter when gas goes to $5 and say ‘Buy an electric car.’ When cities become so filthy and dangerous that you can’t live there. When the economy becomes so distorted your children have no hope of getting married and giving you grandchildren. When you don’t care at all about any of that and all you do is talk about yourself, nonstop, you might get an insurrection if you behave like that, speaking of insurrections.”

Is that right, Tuck? Well, at least the FBI will know who to visit if and when that happens.